Cross-Cultural Intelligence Participants from all over the world will undertake a cultural immersion programme of local community, learning the history and social aspects to provide a framework and background so as to prepare them to understand the context of the issue/problem when interacting with the community. The intense cultural interactions between the various cultures and nationalities of students will provide insights that strengthen students’ cross-cultural understanding.

Academic Knowledge into Action Participants are taught to make sense of what they have acquired in the classroom through putting/linking the academic knowledge into practical execution via various methodologies. The various stages of this discovery/application process are conducted in a real-world situation and are properly structured. The buddy system will enable participants to deepen their understanding on the local community and to encourage meaningful interaction.

Through this immersive environment, participants are able to gain greater empathy of the local community which enable them to fully grasp the communities’ concerns with proper insights mined, and user needs (persona) determined. As a consequence of this immediacy of experience, this learning activity is more likely to be personally meaningful to students and to generate emotional consequences, to challenge values as well as ideas, and hence to support social, emotional and cognitive learning and development of the students.

Interpersonal Skill Sets: Working in a Team-based Environment Participants learn to work in a team-based environment and pulling different resources and expertise into the project. The close and intense work nature of the project requires students to exercise substantial compromise and accommodation towards finding common grounds. They will need to leverage on each other’s abilities and cohesively develop a comprehensive solution that addresses the concerns, needs, and hopes of the community.